2018 NCHC Tournament

The 2018 NCHC Ice Hockey Tournament was played between March 9 and March 17, 2018. Opening weekend games were hosted at the higher seeds at campus sites with the four winners meeting at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota for the Frozen Face-off.

Format

The first round of the postseason tournament features a best-of-three games format. All eight conference teams participate in the tournament. Teams are seeded No. 1 through No. 8 according to their final conference standing, with a tiebreaker system used to seed teams with an identical number of points accumulated. The top four seeded teams each earn home ice and host one of the lower seeded teams.

The winners of the first round series advance to the Xcel Energy Center for the NCHC Frozen Faceoff. The Frozen Faceoff uses a single-elimination format. Teams are re-seeded No. 1 through No. 4 according to the final regular season conference standings.^[1]

Conference standings

Note: GP = Games Played; W = Wins; L = Losses; T = Ties; PTS = Points; GF = Goals For; GA = Goals Against

2017–18 National Collegiate Hockey Conference standings
	Conference record									Overall record
	GP	W	L	T	SOW	PTS	GF	GA		GP	W	L	T	GF	GA
#6 St. Cloud State	24	16	4	4	1	53	93	59		40	25	9	6	144	101
#5 Denver*	24	12	6	6	4	46	76	53		41	23	10	8	135	86
#1 Minnesota–Duluth	24	13	11	0	0	39	79	56		43	25	16	3	132	92
#17 North Dakota	24	8	10	6	3	33	71	68		40	17	13	10	117	95
Omaha	24	10	13	1	0	31	75	97		36	17	17	2	121	134
Western Michigan	24	10	13	1	0	31	82	94		36	15	19	2	115	129
Colorado College	24	8	12	4	3	31	63	85		37	15	17	5	99	121
Miami	24	6	14	4	2	24	62	89		37	12	20	5	103	128
Championship: March 17, 2018 indicates conference regular season champion; * indicates conference tournament champion Rankings: USCHO.com Top 20 Poll; updated March 5, 2018

Bracket

Teams are reseeded after the first round

Note: * denotes overtime periods

Tournament awards

References